Why Remember Iraq?

Most Americans would prefer to forget that we are approaching the
first anniversary of the expulsion of U.S. military forces from Iraq.
The Republican Party, which rallied behind George W. Bush to invade
the country and occupy it, has suffered from a short memory relating
to that misbegotten war even as it agitates for new and similar
military interventions. Much of the silence on the subject is
certainly due to the fact that most Democrats and nearly all the
media were also on board, though perhaps for reasons that did not
completely coincide with the Bush neocons’ imperial vision.
And after the war began and the occupation took on its misbegotten
form under Jerry Bremer, Dan Senor, and a host of neocon acolytes
brought on board to reshape the country, the saga ran on and on. As
Iraq broke down into its constituent parts due to Bremer’s
inept proconsulship, a development that might normally lead to a
rethink of the entire project, Pentagon-based neoconservatives
instead regrouped, doubled down and contrived the 2007 “surge”
to fix things. That the surge was a poorly conceived and executed
military dead end and a complete failure to do anything but deepen
the divisions within Iraq seemed irrelevant, political partisanship
inevitably rushing in to interpret it as a success to provide cover
for the foolish politicians, generals and bureaucrats in Washington
who had conceived it. As recently as the Republican presidential
debates earlier this year the “surge” in Iraq was cited
by several candidates as a litmus test for those who believe in the
“right kind” of foreign policy. Those who did not
believe in the myth of the surge as a subset of American
Exceptionalism were outside the pale, most notably Representative
Ron Paul.

Iraq, correctly labeled
the “worst mistake in American history,” has to be
remembered because of what it should have taught about Washington’s
false perception of the U.S. vis-a-vis the rest of the world. One of
America’s poorest secretaries of state of all time, Madeleine
Albright, once said
that the U.S. is the only “necessary nation” because it
“sees far.” She could have added that it sees far
though it frequently doesn’t understand what it is seeing, but
that would have required some introspection on her part. Albright’s
ignorance and hubris have unfortunately been embraced and even
expanded upon by her equally clueless successors and the
presidencies that they represented. Iraq should be an antidote to
such thinking, a prime lesson in what is wrong with the United
States when its blunders its way overseas as the self-proclaimed
arbiter of the destinies of billions of people.

Everyone but the “realist” and largely traditional
conservative and libertarian minority that opposed the Iraq venture
from day one has turned out to be dead wrong about the war and many
continued to be wrong even when the U.S. military was eventually
forced to leave the country by the Baghdad government. The Iraq war
was born from a series of lies.

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 based on two alleged threats
as defined by the Bush administration and Congress. First, it was
claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and also delivery
systems that would enable it to strike directly against the United
States. Second, it was frequently argued that Iraq had somehow been
involved in 9/11 through its intelligence services. Both
contentions were completely false, were known by many in the White
House to be fraudulent, and, in some cases, were bolstered by
evidence that was itself fabricated or known to be incorrect. Many
in the Pentagon and CIA knew that the case being made for war was
essentially bogus and was being contrived to satisfy United Nations
requirements for armed intervention. Though there were a couple of
principled resignations from the State Department, almost everyone
in the bureaucracy went along with the fraud.

Digging deeper there were other uncited reasons for going to war and
some led back to Israel and its lobby. All of the most passionate
cheerleaders for war were also passionate about protecting Israel.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been paying
money to the families of Palestinians killed by Israel and there
was a perception that he was a potential military threat. When the
U.S. took over control in Baghdad one of the first projects
to be considered was a pipeline to move Iraqi oil to the Israeli
port of Haifa.

Fast forward eight years, to the end of the U.S. military presence. The
neocons continued to see a strategic objective in the shambles that
they had made. In an op-ed
in the Washington Post on the impending U.S. departure from
Iraq one year ago, neocons Kimberly and Fred Kagan delusionally
entertained five “American core interests” in the
region. They were: that Iraq should continue to be one unified
state; that there should be no al-Qaeda on its soil; that Baghdad
abides by its international responsibilities; that Iraq should
contain Iran; and that the al-Maliki government should accept U.S.
“commitment” to the region. As the Kagans are first and
foremost apologists for Israel, it should be observed that Iraq’s
“international responsibilities” would be understood as
referring to the expectation that Baghdad not be hostile to Tel
Aviv.

But looking back a bit, in 2003 Iraq was a good deal more
unified and stable than it is today; there was no al-Qaeda or other
terrorist presence; Saddam generally abided by a sanctions regime
imposed by the U.N.; and Iraq was the principal Arab frontline state
restraining Iran’s ambitions. Then, as now, the U.S. was clearly
“committed” to the region through the overwhelming
presence of its armed forces and one should add parenthetically that
Iraq in no way threatened the United States, or anyone else. It was
precisely the U.S. invasion that dismantled the Iraqi nation state,
introduced al-Qaeda to the country, wrecked the nation’s
economy, and brought into power a group of Shi’a leaders who
are anti-democratic and adhere much closer to Tehran and Syria than
to Washington. Nor are they very friendly to Israel, quite the
contrary, and there is no oil pipeline. So none of the “core
interests” sought by the United States as defined by neocon
doctrine have actually been achieved, or, rather, they have actually
been reversed due to the invasion and occupation by the United
States arranged and carried out by the Pentagon neoconservatives.

And then there is the cost. The U.S. lost
nearly 5,000 soldiers killed plus 35,000 more wounded while the
documented Iraqi dead number
more than 110,000, though the actual total is almost certainly much,
much higher, perhaps
exceeding one million. Ancient Christian communities in Iraq have
all but disappeared. Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz has
estimated
that the total cost of the war will be in the $5 trillion plus range
when all the bills are finally paid. The U.S. economy has suffered
grave and possibly fatal damage as a result of a war that need not
have taken place.

The lesson to be learned from Iraq is actually
quite simple. Military intervention in a foreign land unless a
genuine vital interest is at stake is a fool’s errand due to
the unforeseen consequences that develop from any war. And when
intervention is actually necessary (hard to imagine what those
circumstances would be) it must have an exit strategy that starts
almost immediately. Remembering the government chicanery that led
to the events of 2003 through 2011 means that the lies that are
currently being floated to justify regime change in both Syria and
Iran by the same neocons who produced the Iraq debacle should be
treated with extreme skepticism and summarily rejected. Iraq also
provides the insights that enable one to judge the Afghanistan
enterprise for what it really is: a failure now just as it will be
five years from now at far greater cost in lives and treasure for
Afghans and Americans alike. If the United States cannot learn from
the experience of Iraq it is doomed to repeatedly fail in similar
endeavors until the last soldier comes home in a body bag and the
last dollar is spent, leaving behind an empty treasury and an
impoverished American people.